


Hold This Constant

by Pookaseraph



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Fluff, Gift Fic, K-Science assholes being less assholes, Little bit of angst, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 01:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all this time, there's one thing that they've decided on: the bickering, the yelling, and the arguing ends at the steel door of their quarters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold This Constant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quietbang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quietbang/gifts).



> Prompted on Tumblr from Quietbang who asked for: "It doesn’t matter how much they fight or get on each other’s nerves, it stops when they enter their quarters. They imposed this rule after the Jaeger pilots started dying regularly, because their whole world was harsh and difficult and full of conflict and they needed one place that wasn’t. "

Newt knew that to most, he and Hermann Gottlieb looked like the bitterest of enemies. The jokes about who had gotten the vacation home and the dog in the divorce started barely three weeks into their mutual assignment in the Hong Kong Shatterdome. The truth was, Newt supposed, far more bizarre. They had met at the Seoul Conference and taken to each other like a fish to water - a very aggressive, abrasive yelling fish, but a fish nonetheless. They soon learned that 'freaked out about the fact they were standing on the brink of annihilation' and 'in the presence of scientific genius' was a powerful libido enhancing combination for the two of them and had led to some of the best sex in Newt's life.

Hermann seemed to be in complete agreement, as the pair of them made at least some effort to acquire repeated performances throughout the next year and a half it took for Newt to finish up his Astrobiology work at MIT and then get through the Ranger Academy and into an actual Shatterdome. Whatever they had didn't become explicitly mutually exclusive until sometime in 2018, when Newt had been seriously considering a relocation to the Lima Shatterdome and needed to decide if he wanted to ask Hermann along with him.

He had, Hermann did, they got adjoining quarters, Newt put their various relationship milestones into his calendar, and they had turned into something... good, permanent. They were a constant for each other, they grounded each other, they made it work, and with the Jaeger program in full swing and the Kaiju on the run, it wasn't a hard thing to maintain. They kept their relationship out of the labs, mostly because Hermann was a professional, even if Newt wasn't _at all_ opposed to sex on the office couch/against a lab bench/against the black boards/etc; they didn't keep it out of the bedroom, sometimes they fought all the way to bed, sometimes they argued the math or the science - sometimes _while_ they had sex - and it worked for them because you never really knew when inspiration would strike.

It was 2020 that almost broke them. Hermann's health wasn't at its best that year, they had lost three Jaegers and five pilots, and the whole biology department was moved to Sydney while the Maths went to LA. The change put twelve to fourteen hours on a plane and an International Date Line between them.

"When do you have to leave?" Hermann asked as soon as they were alone together in their rooms after the news had come down.

"Next week," Newt answered, looking down at his hands. "I might be able to push it another week if I claim it's taking a while to pack up my specimens."

Hermann carefully stripped off his sweater, and Newt hiked up a leg to undo his boot. "Are we...?" Hermann's voice trailed off. "Is this...?"

Newt watched Hermann's shoulders square off and he snapped the sweater with a bit more force than necessary, folding it neatly and sliding it back onto a rack.

"Will we be continuing our relationship?" Hermann asked, turning so he could look Newt in the eyes. Hermann looked defeated, and Newt felt like shit for ever making Hermann doubt what they had. It was supposed to be a constant.

"Uh, Dude, not breaking up with you." Newt had to leave one shoe on to get up and walk over to where Hermann was standing, but it was worth it to wrap his arms around Hermann and bury his face in his neck. "Sorta in love with you, a lot... more than a lot, Geiszler-Gottlieb for life."

He'd felt that way for months, maybe years, maybe since Seoul. Maybe it didn't matter how long he'd felt it so much as that he did and that there was no way he was going to let Hermann get away... you know, unless Hermann didn't love him and Newt had to let him go to avoid being a creepy stalker and stuff, then Newt would probably have to let him go and Newt didn't like that, didn't like it at all...

"Please feel the same," Newt said, a little quieter.

"Ah. Yes," Hermann answered, and he placed his own hands on Newt's hips and eased him away. "Yes I feel the same."

"So we can do the long-distance thing," Newt answered, swallowing around the lump in his throat, pushing away the feelings and the fact that he wasn't going to see Hermann again for months after next week. Hermann loved him, that was the important part.

Newt let his hands reach up, slid through Hermann's hair, and pull him in for a kiss. They met somewhere in the middle, and made their way back to their joint bed, working at clothing and kissing at exposed bits of skin as they worked to uncover more.

After a slow lovemaking, Newt ended up with his lips against Hermann's stomach, nose tickling there as well. "We can still teleconference," Newt said. "Or, yaknow, phone sex."

Hermann snorted down at him, fingers tickling at the back of Newt's neck.

"Think of it as an important relationship development. You'll learn some dirty talk."

"Mmmm, well you are already so good at it," Hermann answered, completely deadpan and wry. "You largely manage little more than 'come on, come on' which is certainly the height of coital utterances at inspiring both lust and action."

"You're terrible," Newt answered, punctuating that by nipping at Hermann's stomach. "Why did I fall in love with you?"

"I consider it one of the sole signs of good taste you possess."

Long distance relationships weren't romantic, they weren't easy, and Newt barely got to talk to Hermann about work, much less love, their relationship, or their future. Hermann had the bad habit of becoming withdrawn when he was feeling ill, or strained, or stressed, and that was something that Newt could tease him out of in person, but if someone was dodging your calls it was pretty hard to get them to talk it out.

They lost a fourth Jaeger, driven by a pair of sisters who Hermann had personally helped train in his simulator runs. Hermann didn't call.

Newt used his considerable personal and professional leverage and walked straight up to the Marshal and said in no uncertain terms that he was _gone_ , and would be put on the next flight to LA without argument, and he would be back in a week or two. He found Hermann exactly where he expected him: huddled over his work, tapping out equations, the remaining K-Science Maths boys and girls eying him like a man they expected to snap at any moment.

They weren't wrong.

He took a few steps closer, and then a few more, glancing over to see what Hermann was working on before he decided the man could probably use a break.

A few of the mathematicians saw him, and either drew the right or wrong conclusion, because they looked even more concerned for an impending explosion. "I think you missed a minus sign."

Hermann, predictably, snapped half the chalk against the board and then turned towards him, before his face melted into relief. "You shouldn't be here. There are specimens to collect."

Newt really should have been up to his shoulders in Kaiju guts, and he did have some of his team working on picking up a few choice bits, but... this was... this was more important. "It's being taken care of." He left the unstated implication there. "Come on."

He could see Hermann poised to argue, but then he folded, head bowing, and he nodded. The gesture was accepted, and he guided Hermann away, back towards unfamiliar quarters where Hermann collapsed on the bed and Newt started to work on his shoes.

"You could have called," Hermann said, ready to argue, obviously. Hermann was like that, pushing away, arguing, giving himself emotional distance, and it wouldn't be the first time he'd picked a stupid fight just because he was hurting.

Newt, at least, was ready for it.

"Hermann." Newt walked over to him, and pressed a hard kiss against his mouth. "Do we really need to do this? I know you have plenty of brains to fight with."

Hermann quieted, although he still looked like he wanted to fight. "You are always the best fight," Hermann said, reaching his hands out and wrapping them around Newt's waist, bringing him in so that he could lay his head across Newt's stomach. "But I am reminded you do have some unique qualities."

Newt spent a week, teleconferencing back with Sydney, making sure Hermann ate, dragging him to bed as a reasonable time, and making sure the man had some regular sex - which did wonders for the man's mood. The new rule: no fights behind our door, seemed to have lingered beyond the first day, and there was something comforting about it, safe... Newt needed it.

When they were both relocated to Tokyo in 2021, they had the same quarters, and it remained that way for the rest of the war - the quarters, not the location of those quarters. The two of them fought hard, and they yelled hard; they knew the stakes they were working with. They weren't going to let each other slip up with shoddy reasoning, but when that huge steel door closed there was nothing else but the fact they loved each other and needed each other.

The hell outside their door was constant, so what they had inside it had to be constant as well.


End file.
